Thread: First Haunt Lessons Learned

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Well, I am in severe depression after the several hours of glee Saturday night. Unfortunately the weather here in Michigan was bad to say the least. The storm that dumped all the snow in Denver came howling through. The rain was done Friday but Saturday the winds were in the 20-30 mph range with gusts higher. We got the haunt set up in the afternoon and the winds slowly started to die down as the evening rolled on.

When it was light out the haunt was awesome. The problem came in after dark. I was severely lacking lighting. I soon realized that tombstones were difficult to read, my kicking legs under the riding lawnmower were also in the dark. The 100' of black cemetery fence was invisible. So anyway, its going to a flood light buying mission the day after Christmas. I also quickly learned that if there is any type of wind, save the fogger juice for next year.

But there were great comments about the haunt anyway. I guess its kinda like the artist is the hardest critic. I did score a dozen fogger timers yesterday for half price along with a 100 bucks of odds and ends. WHO HAS THE NEW COUNT DOWN CLOCK FOR NEXT YEAR????

P.S.- Thanks to EVERONE here at this forum for the inspiration and the moments of daydreaming about specific props!!!!

Sorry to hear about the weather Nepboard. I have always gotten lucky when it comes to that here in New Mexico. We did get the tail end of a storm 2 days before Halloween and it snowed for about an hour then was gone. Last night there was no wind, no clouds, and a bright moon.

Glad you still got the props for your setup though, thats what makes it all worth it. There is always next year, but its ALWAYS SOOOO FAR AWAY! hehe
Youll get your break! If you dont, move to New Mexico lol... best weather in the world...

In Chicago we had the same wind gusts in the afternoon. Wind is the one thing I always fear. One gust actually took the top half of my witch's animatronic head clean off. Fortunately I was able to repair that very quickly. I ran the witch without her hat for the rest of the afternoon and then put her hat on when the wind died down. Finally the wind really did die down, and after it was dark my fogger was awesome.

Sorry to hear about your first haunt problems but to be honest after all the years I've been putting a haunt outside I still learn more after each. Just make a note to yourself so you can correct anything for next year.

Here in SE PA we had misty and sometimes full rain on Sunday night but I still wanted to put it all out, motors, lights, fog machines and all so I did. I fully expected everything to burn out and also to write a lessons learned that NEVER put motors, lights, fog machines...etc out in wet weather but my prayer was answered and everything worked all night and survived the weather.

Here's looking to building new props for our 2010's haunts!

Nepboard - good work on keeping the haunt going, despite the weather not cooperating early on.
I hear you on the lighting lesson - my first displays were hard to see at night too.

Sounds like you have a lot of area to light up. The one thing I'd put on your list is watch how much power you're drawing from one circuit. Tripping breakers over and over, all night, gets real irritating (done that too). Disperse your power draw over a few circuits on your board.
Or, invest in some LED lighting. The draw is much, much less - you can get a lot more lighting for your power.

Something I've done in the past, and need to put together again this year, is making my own little LED spot lights to attach to a 12v yard lighting system (like Malibu Lights).
You can run dozens of these things on even a low power system, for lighting wherever you need it.

A great tutorial on lighting is done by Skull and Bone: -Skull And Bone-
(if you haven't seen it before, it's great - check out their pics for the full effect of their lighting)

Sorry to hear about the problems. Im in Chicago area and we were lucky, just the high winds early and a chill in the air. Considering it rain for 4 days before that. I had to keep a few props in the garage, but hey there is always next year.Keep your head up and grind forward.

Later